


Unexpected Detour

by kirkwords



Series: Tangled Jackunzel Rewrite [Jackunzel February Special 2020] [2]
Category: Rise of The Brave Tangled Dragons - Fandom, Rise of the Guardians (2012), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Jack falls out of a tree while Rapunzel gets sing-threatened by Gothel, aka I don't want to re-write Mother Knows Best (Reprise), and im honestly okay with that, ship stuff will happen soon I swear, this has just turned into a Tangled rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26062060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirkwords/pseuds/kirkwords
Summary: Week 2 of the Jackunzel February Special event on Tumblr. (yes, I know it's August, I've been busy)Prompt: Unexpected Detour
Relationships: Jack Frost (Guardians of Childhood) & Rapunzel (Disney)
Series: Tangled Jackunzel Rewrite [Jackunzel February Special 2020] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622515
Kudos: 2





	Unexpected Detour

**Author's Note:**

> took this prompt in a less literal way, with doing a slight detour in the story, but still ending up where the original story did. hope you enjoy it! :D

Jack and Rapunzel had been walking through the woods for what seemed like hours now, both of them jumping at every little sound. Sometimes it was a rabbit, other times it was a deer; never anything dangerous. They spent the trip getting to know each other, and Jack used most of it to explain how he turned up at her tower. He left out the memories; something he didn’t know if he wanted to share just yet. 

Jack was showing off his flying, to Rapunzel’s delight, as he swung upon a branch too high. He went spinning off into the air and crashing onto the soft dirt. Rapunzel appeared at his side and helped him to his feet. 

“Well… that’s not quite where I thought we’d end up” Jack said, looking up at the creaking sign of the pub he had almost crashed into. The  _ Snuggly Duckling _ was an old wooden building, with smashed windows that looked like they’d been leapt through more than once. The front door was cracked ajar ever so slightly to show a dozen large thugs, wandering around and talking. The clink and clatter of glass echoed out the door. 

“It looks… nice,” Rapunzel said, trying to remain optimistic. Jack nodded in agreement, spinning his staff in his hand. He turned to keep walking down the path that led away from the building, back into the woods. Rapunzel stayed fixated on the pub, her head turned to the side, like a confused puppy. Jack stopped and waited for her. 

“C’mon. If we want to see those lights, we better get to a place closer to the kingdom by sundown.” 

“I know… I’ve just never seen a place like this before.” She said, taking a step closer, metres away from the door.

“If you’re not careful, those places can get quite violent. So for your best interest, we should get going.” Jack told her, trying not to sound too demanding. She stood thinking for a second, before shrugging and lightly jogging to catch up with Jack. He made a few turns down thin, winding paths, mostly guessing where to go. Snapping twigs and branches with his staff so they didn’t get caught on anything; particularly Rapunzel’s hair. They made it to another clearing with two paths heading in different directions. 

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Rapunzel asked, leaning forward to try and meet his eyes. 

“Honestly? No.”

“Great. So if we get lost, it’s your fault.”

“Yeah, something like that”

Rapunzel laughed. Her smile was as bright as her hair when she sang. They inspected the paths, one seemed to be paved as it headed over a small hill, so they decided to follow it. It led them through some more woods, before entering a clearing. The sun sat nestled into the horizon, projecting shades of orange and purple across the sky. 

“We’ll camp here for the night, I’ll go get some firewood.” Rapunzel nodded, and smiled at the chameleon on her shoulder, Pascal, Jack had to remind himself of its name. Jack grabbed his staff and ventured into the trees. Finding a decent area away from Rapunzel so he could think, he stuck his staff into the ground and flew up into a tree, snapping off decent sized branches to toss onto a fire. 

“You found her!” 

A flurry of green and blue flashed past Jack’s eyes, throwing him backwards. He grabbed the branch beneath his feet and froze himself to it, hanging to the tree like a sloth. He felt a sting in his hand but figured nothing of it. He watched on with dejected eyes as the firewood clattered to the ground, Jack’s body smoothly following suit, landing softly on the grass. Toothiana flew around him, her wings and feathers fluttering with excitement. The older Guardian scooped him into her arms and gave him a strong hug. 

“Ok, I found her. Big deal. Now, please keep your voice down.” Jack insisted, picking the branches back up and cradling them in his arms. 

“Oh, sorry. I’m just excited, that’s all. She can see you!” 

“Uh-huh. She knows that song. I heard her sing it.” 

“What song? You never mentioned a song.”

“Oh, right. I could hear a song in my memories along with that sun symbol. It was something about a flower glowing, and turning back time? I don’t quite remember it now.”

“Oh my! Oh no…” Toothiana knelt on the ground, her wings still twitching intermittently. 

“What’s ‘Oh no’?” Jack asked, glancing back to where he had left Rapunzel. 

“Where did you find her?”

“Uh, in a tower. She was with her mom, an older woman, black hair, kind of curly. Why?” 

“That’s her. The Lost Princess of Corona. That woman is not her real mother. You need to get her to the King and Queen.”

  
“Hold on,” Jack interrupted, shaking his head in disbelief. “All you told me to do was find out who she was. Now you want me, a Guardian who is invisible to everyone, to reunite her with her birth parents because some greedy lady kidnapped her for her magic hair. Do I have that right?”

“Yes. But you cannot tell her about this until after she sees the lanterns tomorrow night”

“Why?”

Tooth didn’t answer him. She looked to the ground, picking at the feathers on her arms.

“Am I at least getting paid for this?”   
  


Tooth shook her head. She was now standing, her equivalent of it anyway. Jack rolled his eyes and pulled a bush back with his staff. Rapunzel was standing with her back to him, her arms held in front of her, the same cautious and confused stance she had had when they met. Despite how strangely vague and urgent Tooth was being, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. She did know more about the world and people’s histories than he did.

“Fine. I’ll do it. For her.” Jack said quietly. He turned around to say something else to Tooth, but she was gone. He sighed heavily and gathered up the firewood, walking back to the campsite. 

“Hey, Punzie, can I call you that?” After no response, he kept going. “Sorry that took so long, I got lost.” Jack laughed off the lame excuse and arranged a circle of stones, sitting the wood in the middle of it. After several failed attempts to light it, fire or heat wasn’t Jack’s friend most times, the campfire lit up, illuminating their small spot. The duo sat on top of a fall tree trunk in front of the fire. 

“Your hand”   
  


“What?”

“It’s injured. Here,” said Rapunzel, holding out her own hands in a half cupped position. Jack hesitantly placed his hand in hers, he hadn’t realised how bad it had been cut after Tooth scared him. Luckily, Rapunzel wasn’t one to ask many questions about it. As she began wrapping her hair around his palm. Jack tried to pull away a couple of times, but Rapunzel’s grip was stronger, keeping him in place so she could do whatever she was planning. When roughly a foot of her hair was wrapped around Jack’s injured hand, she sang. 

_ Flower, gleam and glow; _

_ Let your power shine. _

_ Make the clock reverse; _

_ Bring back what once was mine. _

Her voice was slow and calming. The roots of her hair shone like the sun, the symbol of Corona. The kingdom she was meant to rule over one day if Jack ever told her about her true lineage. He had to, he had told Tooth after all that he would, so why go back on it so soon? The magic glow of her hair was now at his hand, as the strands looped around and around and around. 

_ Heal what has been hurt; _

_ Change the fates' design. _

_ Save what has been lost; _

_ Bring back what once was mine. _

_ What once was mine. _

The light faded away with the melody, leaving only the sound of the crackling fire in their wake. Jack hesitantly pulled Rapunzel’s hair from his hand, she wasn’t stopping him this time. His hand was completely healed, not even a scar marked his skin. 

“How long has your hair been doing that?” 

“Forever, I guess? Mother says that when I was a baby, people would try to cut it, that they wanted it for themselves.” She spoke, pulling her hair from to face to show Jack a section of hair, brown and short. “But once it’s cut, it turns brown and loses its power. A gift like that, it has to be protected, that’s why I never left and -”

“You’ve never left the tower.” Jack finished her thought. Not wanting to pry too much into her personal life, having not only known her for a day, he asked about something that had been on his mind for a while. “That Wanted poster in the tower, of the thief - Flynn Rider -, what was that about?”

“Mother told me that he was stealing precious items from the castle. He stole a crown, and she was worried that he might come and find me and kidnap me for my hair.” 

“Well, we’d better not let that happen. Try to get some sleep. I’ll keep watch in case he decides to show his face.” 

“What about you? Don’t you need to sleep?”

“Nope. Call it a perk of being Jack Frost,” he replied, a snide smile on his face. Rapunzel must have thought that was a good enough reason and lay down in the grass to sleep. Jack observed the clearing, his eyes drifting back to Rapunzel. Her face was calm and soft as she slept, her mouth open slightly as she breathed. Jack laughed to himself as he noticed that she was using her hair as a blanket. Jack lay on his back on the tree trunk, and, like a Guardian Angel to the Princess of Corona, he kept watch until the sun came back over the horizon. 


End file.
